A major assertion made by those peddling disinformation about the science of climate change is that sea ice is growing, not shrinking. The Daily Telegraph columnist Christopher Booker is one of those to have argued this in justifying his position that climate change is all a myth.

Booker wrote:

“Sea ice cover had shrunk to the lowest level ever recorded. But for some reason the warmists are less keen on the latest satellite findings, reported by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration…

“Its graph of northern hemisphere sea ice area, which shows the ice shrinking from 13,000 sq km to just 4m from the start of 2007 to October, also shows it now almost back to 13m sq km.”

Alongside his piece, he republished a graph showing that the ice had indeed expanded between September 2007 and January 2008. That prompted George Monbiot to write:

“The Sunday Telegraph continues to employ a man who cannot tell the difference between summer and winter.”

But today Climate Progress reports on new data just published which proves Booker to be just plain wrong. The new evidence shows we’ve had record low ice volume for the past three years.

“The big Arctic news remains the staggering decline in multiyear ice – and hence ice volume. If we get near the Arctic’s sea ice area (or extent) seen in recent years this summer, then this may well mean record low ice volume – the fourth straight year of low volume. And the latest extent data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center suggests we will:

“Of course, the anti-science crowd – and much of the media – remain stuck in two-dimensional thinking. So the headlines last month were mostly about how the Arctic ice was supposedly ‘recovering’ to the 1979-2000 average. Now, it was reasonable to ignore the third dimension – ice thickness – when we didn’t have good data on it.

“But now we do, so it is unreasonable to continue focusing on just two dimensions in the Arctic. Trends in multi-year ice — ice volume — are what matter most in terms of the long-term survivability of the Arctic ice in the summer (see New study supports finding that “the amount of [multi-year] sea ice in the northern hemisphere was the lowest on record in 2009”).

“As we’ll see, even when the ice was supposedly recovering in area 2008 and 2009, it was still rapidly shedding the thickest ice — ice older than 2 years.”

Romm looks into the implications of the new evidence more fully, and George Monbiot has debunked some of Booker’s other claims before.

Also today, the Press Complaints Commission issued surely their most amusing ruling ever against UKIP’s Lord Monckton – seen here calling Jewish climate activists “Hitler Youth” – and in favour of George Monbiot. It really is worth a read. One highlight:

“The (Monbiot) blog was simply, and within the bounds of fair comment, taking a swipe at Viscount Monckton’s claim that he could be reasonably termed a Nobel Prize winner.”

And

“While the complainant may indeed have read the draft Copenhagen Treaty, he could not have known with certainty, when speaking in mid-October, what precisely would be signed in mid-December.”

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